エマソンにおける「児童尊重」の思想

その本質と独自性

抄録

Emerson's transcendentalism requires throughout as ideal image an individual self-content and self-respecting. This claim is strongly reflected also in his view on education (the child), it aims at a point where it becomes a “postulate” of perfect “respect for the child”, and the purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and the basis of that “postulate”. From the fact that Emerson's view of “respect for the child” is quoted extensively as a principle to corroborate Dewey and Parkhurst it my be inferred that these ideas form a starting point of American progressivism and child-centered education.
When the “depth” of Emerson's view is examined analytically along the lines of the method of his thinking (“encounter” and “intuition”) in order to clarify the essence and the peculiar character of Emerson's “Respect for the Child”, it turns out that its acme is the world of “reason, i.e. spirit”. This is an understanding of an extremely symbolic (abstract) nature containing at the same time a universal (truth) meaning, hence on the contrary it has been observed that Emerson's postulate of “respect for the child” contains a hidden radical meaning. When one reflects on the underlying reason, the conclusion is that this postulate possesses an ethical character and that the nature (soul) of the “ideal” is typically American.